FOREST SERVICE WARNS OF MARIJUANA GROW SITES

September in Humboldt County means some of the best weather for
outdoor recreation all year. It's also harvest season, and according
to the U.S. Forest Service, back-country campers and hunters need to
be wary of stumbling into large-scale marijuana gardens.

The trend is evident. With 134,000 plants seized in one location near
Dinsmore this month, huge gardens that authorities attribute to
international drug trafficking organizations are out there.

Special Agent Ron Pugh with the U.S. Forest Service Law Enforcement
and Investigations Division said the first indicator of an illegal
grow, aside from the plants, is black plastic irrigation pipe. Other
warning signs are piles of trash miles from the trail head, and tents
or trailers outside established campsites, especially if attempts
have been made to camouflage them.

Pugh advises people who may stumble onto any one of these to
immediately leave the area and contact law enforcement.

A special agent with the Forest Service who preferred not to be
identified said, "These guys are in it for the long haul. They've got
tons of supplies and they're camping on site." But he said the most
common indicator of a large-scale operation, aside from the number of
plants, is loaded weapons.

Pugh said some of these weapons are used for poaching game, but many
of the guns he's found in his years of service are not hunting
rifles. While raiding gardens, he's come across sawed-off shotguns,
pistols and even military-style assault rifles.

These large-scale grows are operated by highly sophisticated drug
trafficking organizations, Pugh said. They move often, he said, use
cell phones or two-way radios, and operate across state and
international borders.

The historic focus of law enforcement has been geared toward
eradication, Pugh said. The tides turned Thursday when Rep. Davin
Nunes (R-Visalia) and U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary
Mark Rey unveiled a program designed to aggressively pursue these
organizations.

In most garden raids, Pugh said, suspects get away, warned by
helicopter noise or lookouts watching the roads. When they are
arrested, Pugh said, most often they're not the ones in charge.

"They're the little guys," Pugh said, "some guy who was hired in an
alley behind a Mexican restaurant who doesn't even know who he's working for."

Pugh said that can make these cases difficult to investigate. You may
catch someone and he might want to cooperate, Pugh said, but he's
unlikely to be able to point higher up the chain.

The workers are often picked up in urban areas and then dropped in
the middle of nowhere, told to tend the garden and promised large
sums of money if they're successful -- if they're caught, they're on
their own, he said.

A document prepared by the Forest Service said the presence of drug
trafficking organizations in Humboldt County has greatly increased
this summer. The Forest Service states that as eradication efforts
increased in Southern California, the organizations moved north to
the relatively unsettled wilderness.

Proof of Mexican nationals operating such gardens came Monday when
USFS personnel and Trinity County Sheriff's deputies arrested Ramon
Orozco-Rivera. Officers found Orozco-Rivera, an alleged undocumented
alien, with 5,165 plants, a shotgun and two loaded pistols in the Six
Rivers National Forest near Willow Creek.

Pugh differentiates between the massive operations and what he calls
a "Bubba garden" -- or a homegrown patch planted by locals.

The larger grows have groups of people camping on location for
months, Pugh said. "They leave piles of garbage and do irreparable
damage to the environment."

Pugh said he's seen a litany of environmental violations from
clear-cuts and stream diversions to toxic dumps of chemical
fertilizers and human waste.

Bob Sise, longtime professor of forestry at Humboldt State
University, has covered hundreds of acres of local forests in his
tenure. He's taken groups of forestry students into the woods at
least once a week since the early '70s. On four occasions, he said,
he stumbled into a marijuana garden with students in tow.

The first time he didn't even know that he had come upon something
unusual. The bus driver had to tell him. He said he eventually
learned to scope out the trip ahead of time to avoid embarrassment.

In all his years in the woods, Sise said he never felt endangered,
but he acknowledged that times seem to be changing. He's heard from
former students working for lumber companies that the larger gardens
are becoming the rule rather than the exception.

"Everyone knows at least one story," Sise said, and he's collected
quite a few. He said the bus driver who clued him in years ago later
became a surveyor. He told Sise about being held at gunpoint once
after stumbling into a garden.

"They didn't hurt him. But they kept him there while they got their
stuff out of there and then they let him go."

The federal plan unveiled Thursday focuses on dismantling the
infrastructure of drug trafficking organizations through
investigative efforts. The plan calls for doubling the number of
federal agents as well as establishing a dedicated special
investigations group.

Better coordination between state and federal agencies is another
goal, along with a change in strategy employing night-time patrols
and increased intelligence capabilities.

"This is the Forest Service's No. 1 priority," Pugh said.